Ron Paul in Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Transcript

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Ron Paul: Thank you very much, thank you. Good to see everybody and David thank you for the introduction, Kim nice to see you here, appreciate you all coming out, I know this is very important but sometimes we get full of ourselves thinking that everybody cares about everything we do very instant, but a lot of people don’t come out to political events so I see people like you as being the exception and concerned and very interested in what’s happening. And your response to the questions indicates to me that your concerns are like my concerns and well the only problem I’ve had with is that I agree, we have a mess and we ought to be concerned. My problem is and I was concerned in the 1970s thinking that we’re going to get into big trouble someday because I could see the handwriting on the wall once we had a breakdown of our monetary system which meant that Congress never had to be restrained. Why would a politician be restrained if they can get reelected by voting whatever the people want, and then if you don’t have enough tax money, you can’t borrow, you just print the money, that never made any sense to me and I though “Well this is going to lead to a lot of trouble” and it has and it’s very hard for me, I think it’s very hard for anybody to understand the mess we’re in without understanding the monetary system.

Well I do talk a lot about that and I sort of simplified the whole thing about the Federal Reserve, I think the Federal Reserve ought to be audited and then we ought to restrain or get rid of the Federal Reserve. But the inevitable results are here now, over these many years, it’s about 40 years since Bretton Woods broke down, that is when the [inaudible] go disappear. But over that period of time we did have recessions that came and went and yet the stimulation of more spending and more printing press money, generally got us out of a recession, but we finally got to the point where productivity couldn’t keep up, we’ve undermined our society and our system to such a point that we’ve had to live on borrowed money for the last 20, 10 years or so. Now we’re the biggest debtor nation in the history of the world, we owe over $3 trillion, in contrast to the country that we see and look down upon because we think of them as old fashioned communists which they no longer are. The Chinese are pretty good at capitalism right now, they make stuff and they save money, they have $3 trillion in the bank, while we’re over in Afghanistan losing lives and wasting all this wealth that we have, the Chinese are over there buying up natural resources. So I would say that the old days were a little bit better when we were more capitalistic, where we worked hard and we got to keep what we earned, today we are seeing results of living on borrowed money.

An individual or a country that lives beyond themselves will have to live beneath their selves, I mean if it’s artificially high, once you get caught up and you have to pay the bills and individuals recognize this a little easier, you just don’t get another credit card and you have to quit spending and you have to either get another job or go into bankruptcy, a country is a lot different, a country can delay it, and we have been able to delay it especially long because after the Bretton Woods Agreement broke down, they allowed us to have the ability to have the dollar as the reserve currency of the world. It was to be used as if it were gold, but it wasn’t gold, and therefore we had tremendous benefits on the short run but the long run is here today and people aren’t going to accept the idea that we could just print money and buy whatever we want. If that were to be the case, if this one did to you, that would mean that Americans don’t have to work, they’re working on all we have the Federal Reserve there printing money. And obviously that can’t work, and my greatest concern in the recent months has been, of course what everybody else it talking about and that is the debt impasse in Washington DC, what are we going to do if we don’t raise the debt limit?

And we’re at a point which is not unusual, it’s happened many times before when the government spends so much and gets into so much debt they can’t pay up, when governments get this call, the bad news is they always default, they always default because even though with their experience that you could work your way out of it and I work with the assumption that maybe we’ll wake up, but history has shown that they always default, there’s two ways of defaulting, one is the debt limit is not increased and we quit spending and there’s not enough money to pay the bond holders, that’s not going to happen and that will not happen, we will pay the bond holders and that’ll be a different problem, and that’s the market. The market is always saying when there’s out of balance of too much spending and too much debt, the laws of economics say “we have to go back withdraw and quit spending and go back to hard work and effort and savings.” But what countries inevitably do and what I believe we will do and we’re in the process of doing and that is continue the printing presses and then we pay off our debts with cheap money, if the government owes you $10,000 from a treasury bond and after 10 years they give you your money, but what if it only buys $2,000 worth of goods?

They’ve defaulted on the $8,000 it’s the purchasing power that counts and this is what we’re doing today, the governments will deceive you but I don’t believe that people are deceived, right now our government tells us that prices are going up at a rate of 2% a year, they say “Oh that’s not too bad and it’s controllable,” but when I talk to people and when I look at the real figures, prices, the average person are going up more than 10% and that is why people are really hurting not only because of the weak economy, but because of the depreciation of the money and one of the plans floating around in Washington today is addressing this and that is change is a problem, so just change the way we calculate the CPI, they did it 15 years ago and that’s why the old CPI says it’s 10% inflation, the government says it’s 2%, they’re going to change it again, that’s what their plan is, so that they don’t have to increase benefits to social security beneficiary, so if they don’t increase the benefits and the dollar goes down in value, it’s a real cut, so they’re defaulting on the promises made and that’s come to a big problem for all of use because it’s going to cause a lot of anger and yet we have to get back to a much sounder economy.

I am convinced that you can’t solve the problems we have today if you don’t understand how we got there, it has to do with a business cycle, it has to do with the Federal Reserve, it has to do with spending too much, it has to do with too much borrowing, too much regulating, too much printing press money, and what have we done for the past three years? They increased the spending, they increased the borrowing, increased the regulation, increase the printing money and it’s not working and so you can’t solve the problems by just doing more of the same thing. And yet we will have to face up to what’s happened today, the reason they haven’t come up with an easy answer because there is no easy answer, I am convinced though if we did the right thing, if you’d just told the people the truth, said “We can’t pay our bills” and then restore a free market economy, restore sound money, restore the principle that says that not only is the government not allowed to steal the wealth from your dollar, but the government shouldn’t assume they own your income. When you’re working today, the government says they own your income and again let’s you keep a certain percentage, now if you accept that on principle, the next step is you really reject the whole notion of an income tax and that is what I believe in.

Most of the spending is always for good reasons, it’s to help people that are in trouble and take care of people even from cradle to grave and then we go marching around the world to help other people and spread our goodness and do these wonderful things, so it’s always well intended so they say but sometimes there are ulterior motives involved. And we have been doing that for way too long so as a people we really have to make the decision, yes Congress has a lot of responsibility, president has a lot of responsibility but ultimately if things are to work, the people have to accept a certain notion, the question you have to ask and we have to help you answer it is “What should the role of government be?” This is what the founders and our early settlers asked, “What is the role of the British Government on us” they didn’t like it and so they changed it. But with me the role of government personally as what is in the Constitution, the role of government is very limited, the role of government is to protect our freedoms, it’s not anymore complicated, just protect our freedoms, let we keep what we earn, keep the incentives there and yeah today it’s totally out of control, if you read the constitution carefully, the constitution is mostly prohibitions, you can’t do this, you can’t do this, you can’t do this, Article 1 section 8 says “What you can do” and they stuck on amendment number nine and 10 to make sure that the government wouldn’t be doing all these things and yet, and if you want government to be involved, it goes back to the states. But unfortunately we have lost that, we’re in, in many ways in a constitutional crisis because the constitution has so little meaning, there is not much meaning there. And it started off with things like in the 1950s, our government started getting involved in public education, always for good reasons , do this and that and raise the quality of care in all the states and everybody had equally good education, now we have equally bad education… so on that essence I say they shouldn’t be there, but if you come down to that conclusion, then there’s no need for the Department of Education, it shouldn’t…

Then we could save a couple of dollars there, if you accept the notion which generally speaking the Congress accepts it, there’s no more effort as there was when Ronald Reagan ran for the presidency in the 1980s to get rid of it, nothing happened, we didn’t. But if we are complacent, or if we accept that notion, then the big mistake is that it happened without amending the constitution. If gold and silver still was legal tender under the constitution but now they say Federal Reserve notes are legal tender and if you use gold and silver you go to prison, that means they ignore the constitution, if they aren’t protecting our civil liberties and our privacy and they’re protecting only government secrecy and they have agencies of government like BATF and Homeland Security and the TSA Agents violating our liberties all the time. If we allow it to happen, then we’ve allowed the constitution to be changed in an improper manner and therefore what we have left is not at all that great, I mean there’s so little respect and really little understanding ‘cause we’ve endured probably 70 or 80 years of educational system that [taught our way] to understand the constitution in a different fashion. And that is the general welfare clause means you can endorse the whole way up their state, or interstate commerce clause means that you can regulate every single product ever made and let the Federal government control it.

Just think of Boeing thinking, they’ve spent billions of dollars on a new plant in South Carolina, the interstate commerce clause was originally written to make sure that you can have interstate commerce, a free trading zone so to speak. So they spent $2 billion down there and because the unions didn’t want it and the president writes an executive order and prohibits it, now that’s what should be unconstitutional, he should be held accountable for that. So it is respect for the constitution that is so vital, now I think it was probably the greatest document written for a country and the people, but it was not perfect and that’s why the founders allowed us to amend it, but we’re in a crisis now because we do way too much, even on foreign policy, there’s no authority in there to say that we’re supposed to be the policeman of the world, that we’re supposed to involved in entangling alliances. And we’re involved in too many entangling alliances, for instance I would like to get out of the entangling alliance of the United Nations.

The IMF, the World Bank, the WTO and NAFTA and CAFTA and all the rest, why don’t we defend the sovereignty of this country and set an example for the world, people sometimes will accuse me of saying “Well you don’t like to go out there and interfere and tell other people what to do, that means you’re in isolation,” well it’s not the case. I want to have trade and travel and visit with people and be friends with people which is quite a bit different, but if we accept this idea that the government should always be doing this and running things, let me tell you, we’re not going to have much left, we’re not going to have free trade, we’re not going to have a productive economy, we’re not going to have sound money and it’s basically the fact that we haven’t followed the constitution. So if you can agree that we got into this mess because we don’t respect the rule of law, I’d like to make a simple suggestion, why don’t we have the only people, not only in the Congress but in the White House that truly believe and will enforce the constitution.

There is no authority for us to be involved in wars around the world, it’s not what we have to do for our national defense. Well, it’s for our national defense, the founders thought about this, first they said under attack, even in those days it was more important because the Congress wouldn’t be in session, if our country is under attack, the president does have an obvious responsibility to do something, but then immediately if it’s a prolonged battle going on and you want to have a word, it’s Congress that makes the decisions, the people to make the decision and that way only Congress can declare the wars. Today we’re in, imagine about five different wars and they’re ongoing and even though they might make you think and we’d like you to believe that the Iraqi war is over and there was a wonderful victory in Afghanistan, I think most people know we’ve been there 10 years and there’s not much of a victory. But we’re in Pakistan, we’re in Somalia, we’re in Yemen and we’re very much involved in Libya and our CIA is involved in Egypt, we’re involved all over the place, as we’re in 130 countries, we have over 900 bases and we’re going broke. And they say “Oh well we’re getting ready to leave.” Do you think the people in charge right now are ready to leave Iraq and Afghanistan even though they tell us that, they’re building huge bases over there. We build an embassy in Baghdad, it’s bigger than the Vatican, cost a billion dollars. I would suggest it would have been much better to spend that billion dollars back here at home is what we need.

My position on foreign policy obviously has economic ramifications and that is if you don’t fight wars that are undeclared, then there’s not very many wars are going to be fought if I’m president I’ll tell you what, and the president does have authority to move the troops. There are some things that are to be very, very cautious to make sure that Congress acts responsibly and put pressure on them to do it but when it comes to troop movements, the president has the authority to move the troops, it’s no declared war, so guess what I would do? I would bring the troops home. Somebody asked me [over there] on TV, “How long would that take?” I said “As soon as we can get the ships there and we will come home” But just think what would happen even without, you don’t put [inaudible] the military, but what you do is you bring them home. Just think how many dollars would we spend here? Germany likes us over there, because we spend millions and millions of dollars and over the years billions of dollars. So we have troops there, we have them in the Middle East, we’re in Japan, we’re in South Korea and we excessively spend all this money overseas; and if I thought for a minute that it would make us weaker, I would reconsider it. But I am convinced that us meddling and being in so many places contributes to our bankruptcy and actually weakens our national defense. So therefore, there’s a lot of argument, the constitutional arguments, the moral arguments as well as the military arguments of why we’re at a point now that we have to change our foreign policy and I think that’s happening, I have sensed it, I mean compared to four years ago, campaigning in the Bates the attitude was different, but the American people are waking up and they realized that it makes no sense for us continue to do this. And I’m delighted to know that in these last four years of a tremendous interest in the Federal Reserve System, last year by working together with the Republicans as well as the Democrats, transparency of the Fed is endorsed by 80% of the American people, and guess why? Because they’ve heard stories about what has happened, they created this huge bubble and most people didn’t fully understand how it happened, but they understood and got interested in what was going on with TARP funds and what the Federal Reserve was doing.

The Federal Reserve pumped into the system $15 Trillion, it’s huge amount of money, more than the Congress can do, so it’s totally out of control, it’s more powerful than the Congress when it comes to how much money they can spend, and one third of what the Fed was involved in, was bailing out foreign banks. I mean just think of that, $5 trillion at, and then what happens when you start thinking about who did they bail out here at home? Did they bail you out? I mean did they bail out your friends or you heard stories, how many people lost their jobs and lost their homes in this country? But who got bailed out? The very people who are ripping us off and a system that was intertwined with the Federal Reserve who did all the speculating in the derivatives market and they finally got to the point that they became worthless and guess what? You bought them, through the Federal Reserve, they back up your dollar, that’s why the dollar is in big trouble, because it used to be gold and silver backed up the dollar, then it used to be just treasury bills backed up the dollar, now it’s these worthless assets that are literally used to back up the dollar and who they got the bailout and the other people lost their job.

Now one thing I am always interested in doing is talking to the opposition or people who disagree that would consider themselves from the left and want to help people and I recognize how serious they are, but you know social programs and welfare programs and I understand that completely, I also understand that the truly humanitarian system that really works is free markets, that’s how you really take care of people but the answer to those who are concerned about what I’m saying say “You don’t care enough about the people,” well I tell you what? What we have here can they be caring about the people? What about a program based on Federal Reserve inflation plus affirmative action programs that everybody gets a house, no down payments and they can borrow against it and then the bubble burst, they lose their job and they lose their houses. How can that be beneficial at the same time the system has bailed out the rich, and then they come along and say “Well we have to pay medical care for everybody” well both Republican and Democratic leadership have followed the same path and that is to keep building more government involvement, have the corporations, the insurance companies and the drug companies, the health management companies, they are the ones who are in between the doctor and the patient. So all these monies plus the bureaucrats in Washington, that’s where all the money goes and that’s why it’s so expensive and then it interferes of course, my strong objection to that when practicing was the fact that it interfered with my decision making and therefore I wouldn’t participate in it because I think good medicine is a doctor patient relationship.

But… I have been a strong advocate for the freedom velocity for a long time, I think the time is better now as ever been in 30 years or so, matter of fact for many years I worked on the assumption that not too many people would even notice and even my voting record for a long time they didn’t notice, but now people do, they say “Are you taking these stands” and sometimes even voted by myself 434 to one to show that there was a certain position to take when it comes to these issues. But the time is so right for this because more and more people are waking up, so we have two sides going on, everybody is worried, everybody knows there’s a problem but one half is extremely worried because they have always been on the receiving end and they don’t see this as “Thank you very much for helping me out, I need help, I need to get back on my feet again” and many of them believe it’s an entitlement, they believe they have a right to this and they have a right to your money and therefore government is supposed to tax you in order to take care of those.

The other half now is recognizing this that the system has gotten out of control we had too much government and the solution is turning it back to the people, let the people assume responsibility for themselves and that’s the system that I believe in because I do not believe for a minute that government has the knowledge, people in Washington in the government, it’s based on those who want to run thing, the reason why fallacy is too recent, one is that government can’t know what you want and what’s best for you, in the social sense or the economic sense, there’s no way I can know your desires but I know that freedom would allow you to make your own decision on how you spend your money and how you want to run your life. But if you turn it over to government, even though they think they’re omnipotent, when they make a mistake it affects every one of us, if you had the right to run your life and spend your money, and you make a mistake, yes, you could get into trouble, but you don’t have a right to go crawling to the government and saying “I want my neighbors to take care of me” so there’s a lot of responsibility put in to this system where we actually recognizes what liberty is all about.

We had a fantastic taste of that in this country in our early years but since the 1930s I would say we have gone in the opposite direction and that’s why we’re a debtor nation with less freedoms and more war, and this has to be reversed, because it will not be a nice place to live in if we can’t reverse this. Now they won’t be able to create the wealth, there could be a lot more chaos, but that means if the authoritarians win it’s going to be with an iron rule and believe they’re there. I was one time sitting on a House floor and it was one of these personal issue votes and I say “Why are you voting on this, why do you have to tell people what they can do all the time” and with a very straight face, and only says this “they’re not smart enough to know” and I thought isn’t that a disaster? Sure somebody might make a mistake, but what happens when that guy makes the mistake? And believe me there are plenty of mistakes, the whole concept of central economic planning is a big mistake and that’s why it has to be really challenged. So I am a strong believer in our constitution, change it when we have to but I’m a strong believer that free markets works, it’s humanitarian, the principle of liberty protects you in your social values, it protects you and your school values, it protect home schooling, it protects you in your religious values and Church values and at the same time, it means that the government is restrained from fighting these undeclared unwinnable constant wars that are bankrupting us.

If we accept that whole package of what individual liberty is all about, in the tradition of America, not accepting the idea that we go back to some dark age, freedom is a new idea, it’s been barely tested, but we go back at least to when we had a fair amount of an understanding and build on that, I don’t doubt for a minute that we could come out of this rather quickly, just like an individual, they declare bankruptcy they might have a bad year. But if they go back to work and work hard and can keep what they earn, we could work our way out of this, but the key to it is understanding and protecting liberty and understanding the limited role for government to protect markets, to protect sound money and contracts and property rights, this is what the government is supposed to be doing, but unfortunately now our government is doing the opposite. So I ask you to consider these views very seriously, hopefully you can join me in this campaign, certainly we’re anxious to get as many people to come to Ames, Ames voting is going to be crucial in what we do, it’s a national recognized straw vote, if we do badly there it will not be a good message for liberty and it will not be a good message for my enthusiasm because I’ll be unhappy if I come in last.

So… but there’s every reason to believe that things are going quite well, and you could help a lot if you believe in what we’re doing, come to Ames vote, bring some people and we’ll send a message that will be heard around this country. Thank you very much.

Male Speaker 1: …that my fellow Iowan’s, does this sound like a message the rest of America needs to be hearing? But you can be a part of that, nobody else can be a part of it, only us Iowan’s can go to Ames and vote in that straw poll and we can take the message that you just heard and magnify it, and elevate it, just by going to Ames and casting the vote for Ron Paul in that straw poll on August 13th, please step outside when we’re all wrapped up here, get signed up, transportation, entertainment, food a great day tremendous speakers including of course Dr. Paul, it’s going to be a really good time. I want you to come, I want you to bring your friends, I want you to bring some family, anybody you can bring with you. We have the opportunity to magnify this message and elevate it and send America a message out of Ames on August 13th so I hope that you will do that. What we’d like to do now is we’re going to have an opportunity for Dr. Paul to answer some questions, we’re going to begin with folks from the press that are here today, if anybody from the press has a question that they’d like to ask the Congressman, please raise your hand, let me know and this is going to be your opportunity to do that. Right, how about the rest of the audience, will anybody… there you go, there’s a bunch, how about this young man right here, and please speak up, the fan up here is kind of noisy shout it out for us.

Male Speaker 2: If you could appoint the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, who would it be?

Ron Paul: Winning the next chairman of the Federal Reserve is irrelevant…it’s the system that is bad, and even though I challenged Bernanke and Greenspan on a few occasions, they’re not my target, nobody and sort of like when I was talking about before, nobody knows how to run your life and nobody knows what the money supply is supposed to be and nobody knows what the interest rate should be, so it’s the system. I mean I could appoint somebody that’s a free market person, but he probably wouldn’t take the job because he would know that he’s not supposed to do it. But somebody that I admire because he really understands is, could either be secretary of Treasury or in the Federal Reserve and that would Jim Grant. Some of you may have not have heard but he knows the Austrian economics and he would be trusted not to pretend and know what the interest rates would be, but he’s probably also the one that wouldn’t take either. But it’s the system of money which is completely contradictory to come out of [big] money which is what I think we need.

Male Speaker 1: Well that gentleman in the purple tie.

Carl: Hi, my name is Carl and I’m a certified public accountant and I spend the majority of my time preparing personal and individual tax returns. However I support you and your position on ending the Federal Reserve and in turn the IRS. So my question to you is this, how do we go about ending the Federal Reserve? Do we have to wait for Congress to repeal the Federal Reserve Act? Could a president lawfully sign an executive order ending the Federal Reserve Charter, or finally could we the people of this great republic take individual actions to end the Federal Reserve?

Ron Paul: Good question, the president couldn’t do it with, or at least I as president wouldn’t do it as an executive order because it was a law that was passed even though it’s unconstitutional, I could conceive or challenge it in the courts, but the courts have always been favorable to, you know any time we’ve challenged that in a court central, banking has always been supported. In what I’ve written since the early 1980s being on the Gold Commission, my approach to it is not to close the Fed down in one day, because it would be chaotic because we are dependent and, but what I would legalize is competition. And today if you as an individual want to compete and you say “Well the constitution say Gold and Silver, I want to take my gold coins and silver coins and we’re going to go out and start trading with gold and silver” I don’t know, you’ve heard the case just recently somebody tried it and went to prison and somebody else tried to pay in silver dollars, old silver dollars ‘cause on the books they’re still legal tender, he went to prison too. So it’s a big problem, but if we had a sensible country that didn’t want to turn the Fed down in one day and didn’t want to keep sending people to prison, what I would do is introduce, well I have legislation introduced now but I would get legislation passed where they would legalize competition.

It’s sort of like the post office, the post office that’s more permitted than of course the Federal Reserve but if you don’t like the post office, you don’t need to close the post office down in one day, just legalize competition on First Class Mail and see what happens. But on competing currencies it means that legal tender laws would have to be changed but if you wanted to do it, let’s say we have rampant inflation like I expect even next year, if you wanted to deal in a gold or silver currency, especially a savings kind in your bank, you’d have to take taxes off it because if you go to the bank and you want to buy or cash in some money for quarters, you don’t get taxed, but if you take your money to a coin dealer, you have to pay tax, then you pay, and then the value of the dollar goes down and the nominal value of your gold or silver goes up, you have to pay a capital gains tax, so it’s not fair. So I would want to legalize the competition and actually this idea has made traction in Mexico because their middle class has been wiped out quite a few times and that is really what happens, that’s a characteristic of runaway inflation, middle class gets wiped out.

But down you could save in silver, our laws today, the current laws have not been repealed says a dollar is 371 and one quarter grains of silver, but that’s never been repealed, there’s not even a law in the book that tells you that Federal Reserve notes our dollars and that is what has to be done. But what I think could happen if we have chaos in the economy which is possible and people are scurrying around at least for a short period of time, I think people will use gold and silver, and it will be a form of nullification, not official nullification but if they have a currency like in Zimbabwe or Germany, I hope it never gets that bad, it is conceivable that it would get that bad and people should and probably will and I think that’s a lot of reason why people do go and buy gold and silver coins just for the fact that it’s just not a few of us that understand what’s happening in the monetary system.

Male Speaker 3: [Inaudible] News, just had a question for you, this is one of your campaign t-shirts and it’s made in [Inaudible] and I didn’t know if you were aware of that and if you weren’t aware of it, maybe change that.

Ron Paul: No I want aware of it but I wouldn’t change it, that would reject the whole idea, let’s say it’s a shirt not a campaign shirt, but let’s say it’s a shirt for $3 and it if were made here it would be $10, so do you want a poor person to pay $10 all the time? No, you want, first every individual has a right to spend the money they way they want, it’s their money, I don’t want to tell people and besides if you say nothing can be made, so we’re going to regulate the prices from imported good. So what about a poor person can get tennis shoes for $10, if you buy them in the United States they cost $100. That wouldn’t be morally right, it would be a good economic policy. So I would argue the case the market should determine it.

Male Speaker 4: The [Inaudible] do you think the [Inaudible]

Ron Paul: The what?

Male Speaker 4: The lobbyist.

Ron Paul: The lobbyist.. he ask about whether lobbyist serve our interests and the lobbyists are a big problem but I don’t see them as a problem the way a lot of other people see it, like we need more laws to regulate lobbyists. If you’ve ever called up your state representative and you call them up and say I want to see you, I want you to look at views on schools or guns or something like that, you become a lobbyist. Lobbying is petitioning and the First Amendment protects petitioning, so I don’t want to regulate petitioners, I don’t want to every say that we’ll interfere, you say yeah but people with the money, they control thing, which there is some truth to that, but the problem there is that government is doing too much, they’re acting outside the law and therefore they have too much to offer and the special interest groups spend the money.

So you need a different system of government where the government has nothing to offer in that sense other than offering you more freedom. But if we had only people of high integrity in Washington, they wouldn’t yield to that, they wouldn’t listen to the lobbyists, they say “Look I’m not going to listen to you” and quite frankly it’s under the law today if you’re a lobbyist and special interests, you’re allowed to donate to me. But I don’t get any money from the lobbyists because they know what my positions are, so it’s a big difference, so lobbying is a big problem but that is a symptom of the size of government and we’re too much involved and too many favors can be passed out and we must be very careful never, in our attempts to straighten out the messes that we’re in, then we take away your freedom and so we want to always protect your right to petition the government with your right to life or pro Second Amendment, you don’t want to restrict somebody else because they’re lobbying for the wrong thing, it’s the principle of petitioning that we have to protect.

Claude: Hey Dr. Paul, my name is Claude, been a fan of yours ever since the last campaign and I know you said you would immediately bring the troops home. But my questions for you is, things like abolishing the IRS and the Department of Education kind of some of the long term goals, is that something that could be accomplished in your first four years or will that take full eight years that you’re in office?

Ron Paul: Well I’d like to do it and very quickly but you know in the midst of revamping of the prices a country is totally bankrupt, that would give you an opportunity to say “This is always going to because you can’t pay it,” you can’t pay all the employees and you could have very big changes. But no you could have, see, I always have priorities in my mind on what we could do if we were to work our way out of it and the easiest place to cut is overseas, you can save a lot of money and probably the place where I want to cut the least would be medical care for children and the elderly, even though technically you don’t have to have it, and it wasn’t meant to be but to attack that makes no political sense and you wouldn’t have to if you’re willing to cut the other. But I would put the Department of Education and Department of Agriculture and Department of Energy and Department of Commerce and Department of Homeland Security, so many other things where it accomplishes nothing and work on it as fast as possible.

But a lot of those, to get rid of them completely, you would probably have to get legislation passed on that if it was made, and the other one I mentioned earlier is challenge some of these things in court and say this is unconstitutional, we shouldn’t continue this program and try to get rid of it that way.

Male Speaker 1: We’re going to have time for two more questions and then what we’ll do after that would be form a line, Congressman will stand at that door, have a chance to greet everybody, get an autograph, if you have a question, you didn’t get a chance to ask, you’ll have a chance on your way out of the room, wanted to let everybody know you will have your opportunity and make sure you get a yard sign on your way out too and stop at the table right outside the door, get signed up to get to Ames, get more information, there’s campaign materials over on the table over on that wall too and I’ll see you in Ames, let’s do two more questions, I’d like to ask this gentleman right here.

Male Speaker 5: Dr. Paul, you’ve mentioned a couple of times today that you’ve stood in opposition to many others in the legislature, you’ve introduced some novel ideas, others have described your ideas, I think it is visionary, unique, what assurances do we have that you can accomplish these things as a leader in Washington, as a unique individual, how can we know that these things are actually going to happen if we send you to the White House?

Ron Paul: Well, there’s no way to absolutely know that, but one thing you could know is that I won’t change my mind in making every single effort to do it… In many ways it does take a consensus the people have to decide what the role of government should be, but what I would continue to do is a country gets into more trouble the more open they’re going to be through these views and that’s where I think we’re making tremendous progress. But no it would take a lot of support, people vote basically on their own self interest, which is okay because… but if it’s only because it’s in their self interest because they think they’re going to steal from their neighbors through their Congressman who’s going to tax their neighbor for the stuff they want, then that is bad. But people vote in their best interest and my job as a president or a Congressman and the job that you have because you’re activists is to convince people that it is in their best interest to opt out for less government and not think that big government is your solution.

Male Speaker 1: [Inaudible] in a buttoned down shirt.

Male Speaker 6: Congressman is the 1970s I don’t remember what year, an executive order closed the gold [dusted] the Federal Reserve banks. As a follow up to this gentleman’s question, could an executive order reopen those gold [desks] where we’re allowed to exchange our Federal Reserve notes for either as silver or gold certificates for bullion and if so how far would that go to reestablishing a commodity standard, what else would be necessary to actually form or standardize a gold standard for the currency?

Ron Paul: Well an executive order could do it but it wouldn’t accomplish what you want because what we were doing in 1971 when the gold window was closed, is that we just said that foreigners no longer could put $35 down and get an ounce of gold because they were running out of gold. Nixon said we have to quit doing that because you couldn’t do it at $35 an ounce, you can’t do it at $300 an ounce, you can’t at a thousand because gold is selling at 1600. So the closest thing you could come to is essentially what we have and that is gold can be bought and sold at $1600 plus. But we’re not selling the government gold and I have pursued this a bit, a matter of fact, hope that’s caught up to Bernanke the other day about why they hold gold and if they are true, then gold s not money, why don’t they just sell the gold? So in your case you say yes and I would really be opposed to that because I believe that the market, if you allow the market to work, the market could pick up competing currencies gold, silver or [basket] of commodities or whatever, gold obviously ultimate test of 6,000 years. But if you wanted to have a government gold standard and worked real hard to keep the integrity of the government so that’s why they honor this, you would have to have some legislation to do that but simply reversing that executive orders wouldn’t be enough.

Male Speaker 1: Right, thanks everybody for coming out, going to sign on your way out, just sign up to vote at Ames [Inaudible]

56 Comments:

Ron Paul said: I mean just think of that, $5 trillion at, and then what happens when you start thinking about who did they bail out here at home? Did they bail you out? I mean did they bail out your friends or you heard stories, how many people lost their jobs and lost their homes in this country? But who got bailed out?

That gave me goosebumps and it's the moment he won me over. Ron Paul 2012!

The Bill of Rights does not contain a list of rights that are given to the American people by the government. Instead it provides a list of the rights that are inherently ours, and they can't be taken away by the government. M Connelly 2011
No more progressives. We love liberty. Stand with Dr Paul and the Constitution of the USA
Lets put a man with the integrity of a great statesman in office...one who cannot be purchased or bullied...Ron Paul 2012!

Not all Libertarians support capitalist economy. Some Libertarian schools of thought -- of which Social Anarchism is a perfect example-- strongly oppose capitalism. Please research this for yourself. This is not an "easily verified" ideal as you claim, but a false generalization. As for the latter, please supply a legitimate source for this information. I am most curious.

Maybe you and all those people you hang out with on the short bus you take to school are laughing, but as for the real United States Patriots who are not brainwashed to loving the same silly old puppets, we are winning. =)

I doubt Obama is "Jesus" for republicans who voted for him in the last election, whereas the same cannot be said for liberal and democrats. So, you did imply that I was a liberal or a democrat. Back-pedal faster, mate, maybe it won't be as obvious.

wait did i say u were a dem? wait no i didn't, so u fail there bro. People who were reps voted for Obama too.. and Ron Paul cares bout America, He knows government shouldn't be so damn big, which controls people

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